Zediva taps loophole, offers new movies online

SUNNYVALE, Calif. -- A California startup is making new hit movies such as "The Fighter" available for instant viewing online through a loophole: It lets customers rent a DVD and a player that are actually located in the Silicon Valley.

By doing this, Zediva Inc. wants to circumvent the usual, sometimes lengthy waiting period that movie studios impose on Netflix Inc. and other companies that offer streaming of movies to Internet-connected TVs, laptops and other gadgets.

Companies are legally allowed to rent physical copies of DVDs without permission from the movie studios, the way libraries are allowed to freely lend out books. Internet streaming rights, however, generally require separate payments, and studios have typically been reluctant to license newer movies for fear that would cut into DVD sales.

Zediva believes it can get around those restrictions by tying Internet streaming to a physical DVD kept at the company's data centers.

"We are renting DVDs just like any DVD rental service," said founder Venky Srinivasan, who came up with the idea for Zediva while traveling and missing access to his DVD-by-mail service. "It's the same as what has been done for the past 30 years."

Still, it is a bold move and could face legal challenges.

The Motion Picture Association of America, which represents the major movie studios, declined to comment. Sony Pictures had no comment and other studios did not immediately return messages for comment.

Copyright lawyer Bob Garrett, however, called the service "cute but illegal." He said there's a clear difference between brick-and-mortar movie rental stores and Zediva's online service because Zediva is transmitting programming over the Internet. That requires a separate copyright permission.

He said there is a "long line of cases" that do essentially the same thing, though using different technologies, as Zediva. In one instance, a hotel in California was taking DVDs or video tapes and playing them in a machine at the front desk, and transmitting movies up to individual hotel rooms on demand.

"The court said it was a violation of public performance right," Garrett said.

In another case, the hotel gave guests the physical DVD player and movie to take up to their room. That was not a violation.

"The difference is the transmission" he said. "That's what converts it into a public performance."